Japanese Philosophy and Science
http://www.rep.routledge.com/article/G100SECT8
Nishida was the single most influential philosopher in the prewar period. His philosophical goal was to locate empiricism and scientific thinking within a larger system that would also give value judgements a non-subordinate place. Zen no kenkyū (An Inquiry into the Good), his first major work, developed the notion of ‘pure experience’, an idea adapted from William James and perhaps developed in light of Nishida’s own Zen Buddhist practice. The book’s theme is that there is a thrust toward unity in all experience. Thought arises out of the disruption of the unity of immediacy and serves as a means to establishing a more comprehensive unity. In Nishida’s phrase, pure experience is the ‘alpha and omega of thought’.
Nishida himself subsequently decided this early effort was too ‘psychologistic’ and ‘mystical’, and developed a different philosophical system in the 1920s and 1930s that emphasized the ‘logic of place (or topos)’. According to Nishida, every judgement is restricted by the logic of its context, which in turn derives from a broader experiential domain that it cannot explain in its own terms (see Logic in Japan). An empirical judgement, for example, excludes the subject of the experience (see Empiricism). Its internal logic precludes the consideration of the self. Yet, of course, there can be no empirical data without an experiencing subject; so, the logical place within which empirical judgements are made is within a broader experiential context that assumes the function of the self. If that broader context is then made the logical domain for judgements, we have idealism. In turn, according to Nishida, the experiential locus that makes idealist judgements possible cannot be spoken of logically within the domain of idealism. Nishida calls this experiential locus ‘place of absolute nothingness’, the ground of ‘acting-intuiting’. This region cannot be expressed in any logical form, but is the basis of all logical expression. It is also the ground of value: spiritual, ethical and aesthetic.
In this way, Nishida argued that the realm of empirical judgement is necessarily grounded experientially in a realm of value that it cannot analyse from its own standpoint. Nishida’s system attempted to grant Western science its logical place while showing that its experiential ground was what traditional Asian values had affirmed all along. Religion, at least in its Asian forms, was not antagonistic to science, nor was it endangered by science. On the contrary, Nishida argued that spiritual experience is what makes science logically possible.
In this we see that it is not something particular in either science or religion that is fundementally at odds with the other. This arrives in particular interactions, i.e. with the battle between creationists and the theory of evolution. Also, historically we find that science was often picked up and furthered even in the west by religious groups. So along side Darwin we find Mendel; We find Einstein and a notable scientific input from the Jewish community, and that the Muslims retained much of the existing Hellenistic thought through Europes dark ages. So it seems that the tension between science and religion exists in the particular but dissolves in the general. The interesting point is its genesis. I take it this always comes from a Literalism practiced on both sides tied up with a certain psychological state.
Nishida was the single most influential philosopher in the prewar period. His philosophical goal was to locate empiricism and scientific thinking within a larger system that would also give value judgements a non-subordinate place. Zen no kenkyū (An Inquiry into the Good), his first major work, developed the notion of ‘pure experience’, an idea adapted from William James and perhaps developed in light of Nishida’s own Zen Buddhist practice. The book’s theme is that there is a thrust toward unity in all experience. Thought arises out of the disruption of the unity of immediacy and serves as a means to establishing a more comprehensive unity. In Nishida’s phrase, pure experience is the ‘alpha and omega of thought’.
Nishida himself subsequently decided this early effort was too ‘psychologistic’ and ‘mystical’, and developed a different philosophical system in the 1920s and 1930s that emphasized the ‘logic of place (or topos)’. According to Nishida, every judgement is restricted by the logic of its context, which in turn derives from a broader experiential domain that it cannot explain in its own terms (see Logic in Japan). An empirical judgement, for example, excludes the subject of the experience (see Empiricism). Its internal logic precludes the consideration of the self. Yet, of course, there can be no empirical data without an experiencing subject; so, the logical place within which empirical judgements are made is within a broader experiential context that assumes the function of the self. If that broader context is then made the logical domain for judgements, we have idealism. In turn, according to Nishida, the experiential locus that makes idealist judgements possible cannot be spoken of logically within the domain of idealism. Nishida calls this experiential locus ‘place of absolute nothingness’, the ground of ‘acting-intuiting’. This region cannot be expressed in any logical form, but is the basis of all logical expression. It is also the ground of value: spiritual, ethical and aesthetic.
In this way, Nishida argued that the realm of empirical judgement is necessarily grounded experientially in a realm of value that it cannot analyse from its own standpoint. Nishida’s system attempted to grant Western science its logical place while showing that its experiential ground was what traditional Asian values had affirmed all along. Religion, at least in its Asian forms, was not antagonistic to science, nor was it endangered by science. On the contrary, Nishida argued that spiritual experience is what makes science logically possible.
In this we see that it is not something particular in either science or religion that is fundementally at odds with the other. This arrives in particular interactions, i.e. with the battle between creationists and the theory of evolution. Also, historically we find that science was often picked up and furthered even in the west by religious groups. So along side Darwin we find Mendel; We find Einstein and a notable scientific input from the Jewish community, and that the Muslims retained much of the existing Hellenistic thought through Europes dark ages. So it seems that the tension between science and religion exists in the particular but dissolves in the general. The interesting point is its genesis. I take it this always comes from a Literalism practiced on both sides tied up with a certain psychological state.